In Legal Practitioners Complaints Committtee v MMT [2006] WASC 211, the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Western Australia struck a 37 year old solicitor (with a Masters in psychology) off the role of practitioners for stalking his ex-girlfriend, another solicitor. In fact he sent her boss a video of him and the victim having sex in happier times. He pleaded guilty in the criminal court and received a suspended 9 month jail sentence. He admitted the allegations against him before the disciplinary tribunal, which found unsatisfactory conduct, the only disciplinary offence in WA, to be made out. The tribunal suspended him from practice. The Tribunal referred its reasons for decision to the Supreme Court. The plaintiff applied successfully for the solicitor to be struck off the roll. Though the solicitor attributed his actions to depression occasioned by the breakup of his relationship with the victim, he had not sought enough psychological assistance for the Court’s liking, and had not been found by the disciplinary tribunal to be genuinely remorseful. He had ceased practising as a lawyer and moved 4 hours away from Perth, where the offences occurred, though. The conduct he engaged in was as follows:
“On 16 January 2004 he damaged or destroyed the victim’s clothing, a handbag, shoes and her car. On 17 January he again interfered with her car. On 19 January he poured some sort of liquid over the car, damaging the paintwork. On about 20 January he sent a videotape to his victim at the place where she was employed. It showed her and the respondent engaged in sexual activity. On 25 January the respondent took items of the victim’s clothing and damaged her home.
12 On about 3 February he sent the videotape referred to, again to her workplace, this time not to her, but so that it was viewed by her supervisor and other staff members. On 24 February he scratched and damaged the paintwork on her vehicle. On 12 April he damaged the vehicle by spray-painting it. He slashed the soft-top canopy of the vehicle. On 24 April he repeated that activity. On 29 April he again attended at her home. On 7 May he did so again, took various items of her property, and later on that day took one of her dogs. There is, in the circumstances, no reason to dissent from the view of the Tribunal that the respondent’s conduct was not only unsatisfactory, but ‘utterly deplorable’.”
